The Latest Injury Update on The Rock

We had an article yesterday on former WWE Champion Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson reporting that he had left the New York area where Monday Night Raw was atand headed to Los Angeles. It was also reported that Johnson suffered some type of abdominal injury and didn’t notify anyone in WWE that he had left the area, which caused backstage chaos and forced several re-writes to the show.

As noted earlier, The Rock legitimately suffered torn abdominal and abductor muscles and suffered a hernia during his match with John Cena at WrestleMania 29 last Sunday. Dave Meltzer noted on Wrestling Observer Live that the Rock did in fact notify the company about the injury. It may be a case of a lot of people not knowing what was going on while the show was re-written yesterday, which led to word getting out that he had bolted home without telling anyone.

The Rock immediately flew to Miami yesterday to get the injury checked out. Meltzer noted that the muscle was completely torn off the pelvis, and that it was a bad tear that may require surgery.

If he does need surgery, that would put off filming for his upcoming movie, Hercules, for the time being. The Rock was scheduled to leave shortly to Hungary and Croatia to film the movie, in which he is playing the title role. This is a big deal, as the movie is a major project co-produced by Paramount and MGM with Brett Ratner (The Rush Hour series, Tower Heist) slated to direct. It was scheduled to release during the key summer movie season of 2014. This more than explains the urgency of Rock wanting to get the injury checked out. Rock has been preparing for the role for a while, and has expressed his excitement for the project during several media interviews. There is also another Hercules movie in production, Hercules 3D, that was already planning to beat Ratner’s movie into theatres by five months.

This also will undoubtedly put pressure on The Rock to stop wrestling. The movie studios have big money riding on him with these projects, and there was always the fear of Rock getting injured during a match. Since he started getting lead roles in 2002, he had managed to stay injury free with his matches, which likely put execs at ease. The only injury he had sustained during that time was rupturing his Achilles tendon in 2006, however that was during the filming of The Game Plan and not during a match. Even so, the injury delayed that project.

Obviously WWE fans want to Johnson back in the squared circle. Do you think that happens?

About Steve Muehlhausen

Steven was a featured UFC columnist for Bleacher Report and a writer for MMASucka.com. He was also the host of the MMA show "The Fight Club Chicago" which aired for three years at various websites. You can email Steve at stevemuehlhausen@yahoo.com.